Reunion co-chairs Ools Lindholm and Ed Matthews wrote to all of us in January with information about our 65th Reunion. In case you might have misplaced some of their information, a copy of the Reunions mailing can be read by clicking below:

Herewith the names of the current students who hold our Class of 1953 Memorial Scholarships, as well as those awarded scholarships endowed by Gordon Beaham, Bronson Ingram and Peter Nomikos. You might like to drop a note to one or more of the 1953 Scholars, perhaps to make you feel young again, or to compare/contrast your experience of Princeton with theirs! Posted by John C. Stone II, Secretary and Webmaster, until someone volunteers to take on this enjoyable web role!

In a very Princeton marriage, Grace du Pont ’12 the daughter of Jenny and Pierre duPont – both ’82, married Conor Sutherland ’10, the son of Denise and the late Don Sutherland ’53. Classmates who attended our Berlin – Dresden – Prague “mini” will remember Jenny, who was our coach and guide and helped make a great trip even greater!

Pat and I are looking forward to our 60th wedding anniversary this coming December. We married while I was getting my MBA at Columbia, and have been in Atlanta since 1962. I spent 15 years in the investment securities business, with The Robinson-Humphrey Company and White, Weld & Co., and the balance of my career in real estate sales, development, property management and syndication. Pat is still painting, and her joyful oils and watercolors are in prominent private collections throughout the South, and in New York and France.

We have five wonderful children and six grandchildren. Our son Emery – whose guide to selling your business, entitled “Turn Your Blood, Sweat & Tears Into Cash,” has just been published – has two sons, Emery and Crosby, both Washington and Lee grads, and a daughter, Burchie, who is at Ole Miss. Our daughter Susan is chairman of the school board where her two daughters, Elizabeth and Erin, attend; and is current President of the Georgia Branch of The Huguenot Society of the Founders of Manakin in the Colony of Virginia. Her son Sam is studying engineering, and running track and cross country, at Lipscomb University in Nashville. Our youngest daughter, Ann, is married to the new owner of Grow Best, a fast-acting nutrient for outdoor and indoor flowers and vegetables that really works!

Peg Runger forwarded your email to her commenting you might be interested in Pete’s training for the lunar landing and his comments about it after his return. I served as NASA’s manager for the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle Project, a free-flight simulation of the control characteristics of the Lunar Module during its final descent to the moon’s surface. The management at the Manned Spacecraft Center (later renamed the Johnson Space Center) initially considered the LLTV unnecessary given the fixed base and other LM simulators. Neil, Pete, and the other astronauts, however, rose up as one to say that a free-flight simulation of the actual landing was essential. That, of course, prevailed.

Management, of course, was quite interested in Neil Armstrong’s and Pete’s comments after their return about the challenges of the landing and their training for them. Pete’s were quite detailed and are recorded in a lengthy meeting he had for that purpose with JSC management after his return. If you’re interested, I included the transcript of that meeting as an appendix in my book, “A Much Unsung Hero”, available as a Kindle ebook. The title comes from Neil Armstrong’s book, “First Man”. Neil commented that if he had to rate the difficulty of a lunar landing from one to 10, it was a 13.

Best regards, Jim Bigham

Peg Runger <pegrunger@aol.com>

To:jcstone53@yahoo.com

Aug 15 at 12:25 PM

John, Jim Bigham was in Nelson’s high school class in Pittsburgh, PA. He graduated from Purdue with Neil Armstrong. I thought you’d find what he had to say of interest. Peg Runger

Here’s hoping that the summer (if you live in the northern hemisphere!) has treated you well so far. We welcome news, travel reports, athletic accomplishments and more. In the July 12 PAW I see letters from Charles Graves and Paul Hertelendy that you might check. I will add obituaries and other class news to our website as I receive them. Today I posted an obituary for Cal Perrine written by his wife Lisa.

Personally, I was delighted that Team New Zealand won the America’s Cup, and in convincing fashion. A devotee of New Zealand after fifteen visits, I can’t imagine a more deserving or delightful nation. As for my own sailing, with son John we capsized yesterday in stormy winds sailing my FD. Very challenging getting it upright and moving. The former Olympic Class Flying Dutchman was designed for “25-year-olds” and perhaps is too much at 86!

I remember, many years ago, reading in the PAW, that a member of the Class of 1932 arranged to have a Dixieland Jazz Band play at his funeral. What a great idea! So last year we presented a concert here at our website in memory of lost classmates. Herewith we do so again, with our 2nd annual memorial concert:

1953 Memorial Traditional Jazz Concert

Listening suggestions

Use decent quality earphones, or connect to your audio system with a stereo cable with a 1/8” plug from your earphones jack.

Click on the link to the chosen song. When it ends, close the Youtube page with that song, otherwise Youtube will choose a next song for you! When you close the Youtube window you should be taken back to this email message where you can choose another song. Repeat this process.

Comment from one of the Youtube Barber band reviewers: “I’ve seen Chris Barber and his band twice at 2 different locations and quite honestly they were both the best nights I’ve had in my life”

Welcome to the second annual Kendal Traditional Jazz Concert. Tonight, we will feature the Chris Barber band of the UK and Europe. The Chris Barber Band has been the most successful and popular of the European jazz bands for more than sixty-five years.

Chris Barber was born on April 17,1930 and turned 87 this past Monday. He started his own amateur jazz band in 1949 at the age of 19. In1953 he teamed up with trumpeter Ken Colyer and clarinet player Monty Sunshine to form the Ken Colyer jazz band. Colyer had played in New Orleans for years and believed strongly in the traditional New Orleans style – with which I agree. In1954 Colyer and Barber disagreed on style. They separated and Barber formed The Chris Barber Jazz Band. Pat Halcox returned to play trumpet and cornet.

Barber has been leading jazz bands from1949 to 2017. Sixty-eight years!

The band’s first concert on the continent was in Copenhagen in 1954. Since then there have been thousands of concerts including every country of Europe and beyond, for more than sixty years.When I lived in England in the sixties, Barber’s band was voted Britain’s favorite traditional jazz band.

We begin our concert tonight with Barber’s most requested tune, an all-time Dixieland favorite that was played regularly in New Orleans by George Lewis and his band and by virtually all jazz bands everywhere. In 1985 (perhaps he was exaggerating) Barber said that it was the 4,832nd time he had played this number.

You may find the vocal portion to be somewhat odd, but many will recognize the singing style of the great Louis Armstrong in the way the Barber Band members sing this number.

I have chosen this number to start off in part because some of you might have been late for dinner and skipped dessert in order to get here on time. So here we go:

Ice Cream! (“Ice Cream You scream we all scream for ice cream”.)recorded in the Netherlands in 1997:

By the way, the last time I sang this song I sang it for thePrince of Wales,,,,,…yeah…….there was this fellow sitting at the end of the bar. When we finished playing the number, he hollered “If you’re a singer, I’m the Prince of Wales!”

This is a recording from his mid period of a concert in Stockholm Sweden in 1986.
In its 31st year of having worked up to be the most successful jazz band in Europe. Barber played some 240 concerts a year.

Jambalaya – Barber Chris 1986: The band plays Jambalaya with a New Orleans style feel. Here you can hear that the Barber Band always was influenced by the Wilber deParis Band
Chris Barber trombone, Pat Halcox trumpet, Ian Wheeler clarinet and saxes, John Crocker clarinet and saxes, Johnny McCallum banjo and guitar, Roger Hill guitar, Vic Pitt bass and Norman Emberson drums. Chris Barber started his jazz band in 1954 with trumpeter Pat Halcox on his side since the beginning.

In 1994 Chris Barber and his Jazz Band celebrated their 40th anniversary and played a series of somewhere between 75 and 100 jubilee concerts all around Europe. Not only would Chris perform with his most recent personnel, he would also make part of the show a feature with members of his 1954 band. In this number and the following 1994 numbers, Barber brings back the early band with Monty Sunshine on clarinet.

Colin Bowden – Drums
Bowden was born in Hampstead Heath, London in 1932 and lives in Suffolk. He remembers at the age of ten seeing through a village hall window a drummer performing live and feeling that he had discovered Eldorado! Some years later, after conscription service with the RAF he renovated an old drum kit which he had bought from a workmate who was cleaning out an attic. It was late 1952. Colin was collecting Spike Jones records until he heard “Oh, Didn’t He Ramble?” and that 78rpm disc by Jelly Roll Morton put him firmly on the jazz trail. Over the years main influences have been Baby Dodds, Big Sid Catlett and Art Blakey along with all the others. He is generally regarded as the finest New Orleans drummer in Europe.
Colin was invited to be part of the 40th Anniversary tour of Chris Barber’s Jazz Band. Colin played in this band’s concert as it was some 40 years before. Although I believe that Colin then wasn’t a member of the band he certainly must have played with them as a substitute. In the sixties and seventies Colin was the permanent drummer of Ken Colyer’s Jazzmen.
We see Colin being featured on drums in that particularly interesting Baby Dodds styled approach in the tune “That’s a Plenty”

comment from a fan:
“In 1953 Ken Colyer and his Jazzmen recorded several tunes which came out on a 10″ LP called “From London to New Orleans”. As a 16 year old and a beginning jazz cornet player I was able to get this LP. with Ken Colyer tpt, Monty Sunshine clt and Chris Barber trombone.
For many of us this was a new style of New Orleans jazz that set a sample and became a standard of how our beloved jazz should be played. Both Ken and Chris’s bands had a big influence on my jazz development. Only some 6-8 years later I became familiar with the Eddie Condon Style which gave me an opportunity to look at traditional with a somewhat different view. Once I immigrated to Canada and eventually landed in the Climax Jazz Band comprised mainly of Brits I got back in the British traditional jazz stream.
Then, I was playing at the 1994 Sacramento Festival and I met drummer Colin Bowden. He told me that he was part of the Chris Barber’s 40th Jubilee concert tour, a tour of close to 100 concert hall concerts throughout Europe where Chris would not only feature his much more modern Jazz and Blues Band but also play with his original band, with as many of the original members available.
Shortly after I found this German concert film of one of these performances. You’ll see and hear the Chris Barber Band playing “The Isle of Capri” with Chris on trombone, Pat Halcox on trumpet, Monty Sunshine on clarinet, Jim Bray on bass, Johnny McCallum on banjo and Colin Bowden on drums. Nostalgia for them, but certainly for me as well.
Some of you were there at that time in the fifties and sixties, and I think it was a darn good time!

Here’s to all of you regulars who enjoy our easy-going off-year reunions. No pressures nor responsibilities. Just enjoy the music, other reunions, alumni, friends and relatives of all ages, the P-Rade, and so forth. Headquarters for signing in etc. will be at Forbes College (i.e. the old “Princeton Inn”) where 1952 will be holding their 65th alongside “The Old Guard” and where we will be next year.

Our 64th Reunion dinner will be held as in the past at the Nassau Club in downtown Princeton. Cocktails 6:30; dinner at 7:30. Please call Class Vice President Dave Brown for reservations: 215-493-6876.

Last year we celebrated the impressive gain in value over the years of our Class of 1953 Memorial Scholarship. Our Scholarship supports four undergraduate students every year. To read brief biographical sketches of this year’s 1953 scholars, as well as the names of those awarded scholarships from the Peter Nomikos, Gordon T. Beaham III, and E. Bronson Ingram Scholarship Funds, click on the link below. Much more information about the University’s $147.4 million scholarship budget is presented as well. Princeton ranks at the top nationally for the zero to minimal debt held by our graduating seniors.